Halfskin Boxed: A Technothriller

Biomites are artificial stem cells that can replace any cell in your body. No more kidney failure, no severed spines or blood disease. No cancer. Pharmaceuticals become obsolete. With each dose of biomites, we become stronger, we become smarter and prettier. We become better. At what point are we no longer human? Jamie wants to be a halfskin. But Jamie's body is already 49.9% biomites. The rest is clay - her God-given organic cells. Any more biomites and she becomes a halfskin. And halfskins are shutdown.

The Socket Greeny Saga: Socket Greeny, Book 1-3

The entire Socket Greeny trilogy (Discovery, Training, and Legend) follows a white-haired teenager that discovers he's part of an evolved human race, how he trains to understand his true self, and the legendary conclusion of his true nature.

Cast Under an Alien Sun: Destiny's Crucible, Book 1

Joe Colsco boarded a flight from San Francisco to Chicago to attend a national chemistry meeting. He would never set foot on Earth again. On planet Anyar, Joe is found unconscious on a beach of a large island inhabited by humans where the level of technology is similar to Earth circa 1700. He awakes amid strangers speaking an unintelligible language and struggles to accept losing his previous life and finding a place in a society with different customs, needing a way to support himself and not knowing a single soul.

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

Not Alone

When Dan McCarthy stumbles upon a folder containing evidence of the conspiracy to end all conspiracies - a top-level alien cover-up - he leaks the files without a second thought. The incredible truth revealed by Dan's leak immediately captures the public's imagination, but Dan's relentless commitment to exposing the cover-up and forcing disclosure quickly earns him some enemies in high places.

The Game: The Game Is Life, Book 1

What if life as we know it was just a game? What if instead of traditional schools, children learned by participating in a virtual reality simulation, one that allowed them to experience "life" from birth to death - multiple times? What if one player, on his final play, could change the world forever?

The worst of nature and the worst of science will bring the human race to the brink of extinction. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force team, code named Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top secret medical corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet - a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.

Artifact

Deep in the Indian Ocean, Dr. Selene Khan enters an underwater dome thousands of years old, one that is fully operational. She barely escapes to the surface, only to discover that her research vessel has vanished. Can she make it to shore 100 miles away? On the other side of the world, Agent Jack Elliot uncovers an impossible 900 grams of antimatter. The trail leads him to Egypt, betrayal, and a sinister brainwashing facility. There, in a desperate move, he rescues Dr. Selene Khan.

Mind Dimensions, Books 0, 1, & 2

The first three books in the Mind Dimensions series from a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author.... Darren's had it easy his whole life. Finishing Harvard at 18 and landing a lucrative job on Wall Street at 21 - all things are possible when you can cheat by stepping outside of time. Thanks to his ability, he's a know-it-all, but what he doesn't know is how he's able to do what he does. That's until he meets Mira and discovers her dangerous, hidden world.

Hard Duty: Merkiaari Wars, 1

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw 16.2 billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades. Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

Awaken Online: Catharsis

Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that are so sorely lacking in his real life. Awaken Online is a brand new virtual reality game that just hit the market, promising an unprecedented level of immersion. Yet Jason quickly finds himself pushed down a path he didn't expect. In this game, he isn't the hero. There are no damsels to save. There are no bad guys to vanquish.

The Call

Fourteen-year-old Nessa lives in a world where every teen will be "Called". It could come in the middle of the day, it could come deep in the night. But one instant she will be here, and the next she will wake up naked and alone in the Sidhe land. She will be spotted, hunted down, and brutally murdered. And she will be sent back in pieces by the Sidhe to the human world...unless she joins the rare few who survive for 24 hours and escape unscathed.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Phantom of the Earth: An Epic Sci-Fi Saga, Books 1-5

Here are the five thought-provoking postapocalyptic stories that lovers of science fiction can't stop talking about, gathered together in one volume for the first time. The futuristic theories, conspiracies, political maneuvering, and characters within these visionary tales will stay with you long after you finish.

Opening Moves: The Gam3, Book 1

The Earth is changing. The alien invasion brought social upheaval, advanced technology, and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game. A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. Alan can't wait to play, recklessly diving into the digital universe. Soon though, Alan realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.

The World Walker: The World Walker Series, Book 1

Just outside Los Angeles, a prisoner hidden away for 70 years sits up, gets off the bed and disappears through a solid wall. In Australia, a magician impresses audiences by producing real elephants. Nobody realizes it's not an illusion. Across the world, individuals and organizations with supernatural power suddenly detect the presence of something even they can't understand. At the center of it all, Seb Varden, a 32-year old musician with a secret in his past, slits his wrists, is shot dead and run over on the freeway.

The Cure

The Cure is a genre-bending thriller reminiscent of Michael Crichton or Douglas Preston, about the biological underpinnings of psychopathy. As a child, her family was taken from her by a serial killer. Erin Palmer is left orphaned and forever scarred. She dedicates her life to the study of psychopaths, conducting one-on-one interviews and tests with inmates. When Erin finally finishes years of exhaustive research, she finds herself in possession of the key to ending psychopathic behavior - in the species - forever. That' s when they try to kill her.

Delvers LLC: Welcome to Ludus

Henry and Jason led normal lives in Seattle before they were abducted to another world. Their kidnapper, the vain, self-styled god Dolos, refuses to send them back unless they can accomplish an impossible task. Oddly, Dolos doesn't seem to care if they succeed or not. Luckily, Henry and Jason studied Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) on Earth. Unfortunately, a Japanese American EMT and a geeky IT programmer don't have many other useful skills on a sword-and-sorcery world like Ludus.

The Spaceship Next Door

When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization everyone freaked out for a little while. Or almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door.

The Passage: The Passage Trilogy, Book 1

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

WIRED

Kira Miller is a brilliant genetic engineer who discovers how to temporarily achieve savant-like capabilities in all areas of thought and creativity. But what if this transcendent level of intelligence brings with it a ruthless megalomania? David Desh left the special forces after his team was brutally butchered in Iran. Now he has been reactivated for one last mission: find Kira Miller, the enigmatic genius behind a bioterror plot that threatens millions.

In Times Like These

Benjamin Travers has been electrocuted. What's worse, he and his friends have woken up in the past. As the friends search for a way home, they realize they're not alone. There are other time travelers, and some of them are turning up dead.

The Hike

When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.

Publisher's Summary

The Annihilation of Foreverland: When kids awaken on an island, they're told there was an accident. Before they can go home, they will visit Foreverland, an alternate reality that will heal their minds.

Foreverland Is Dead: Six teenage girls wake with no memories. One of them is in a brick mansion, her blonde hair as shiny as her shoes. The others are in a cabin, their names tagged to the insides of their pants. Their heads shaved. Slashes mark the cabin wall like someone has been counting.

Hundreds of them.

Ashes of Foreverland: Tyler Ballard was in prison when his son created a dreamworld called Foreverland, a place so boundless and spellbinding that no one ever wanted to leave. Or did. Now his son is dead, his wife is comatose, and Tyler is still imprisoned.

This was an awful story. I couldn't understand what the point of the story was. Were the people living in a Matrix story? This author also sounded like he had cotton or marbles in his mouth...Don't read your own novels. There's a kind of narcissism involved when writers insist on doing it. I just find it distasteful, sorry. Stephen King has read his own stories & it never sounded right.

I got 1/2 way thru before giving up on this.The premise while interesting turned it into a very hard book for me to keep sorted.The beginning with Danny coming to the facility and not knowing who, what,where or why kept me intrigued for a few hours.It just went on for too long.Tony Bertauski is a fine narrator.I was provided this book free by the author ,narrator or publisher.

I was one of the fortunate readers who had access to two parts of Tony Bertauski's fascinating saga and thus jumped on the opportunity to get the full story. "Foreverland Boxed" in all its sections is original, frightening, suspenseful and provocative science fiction. What if we had the capacity to wipe the frontal lobes of young persons with few resources and social ties and let the richest 1% take over young bodies when their own bodies are sick, old, or not beautiful enough?

Recently I re-read two of my favorite sf classics, "This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin and "Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress. What makes these books timeless is the way they focus on attributes of human nature that never change: our drive for power, comfort, wealth, and security. And what happens when someone questions these values, and the way they are achieved? Unlike all other species, we are the one animal with an uneasy relationship with our environment and members of our own human race. We have yet to find a socioeconomic solution that takes care of everyone's needs--and in the process of seeking this solution, we have committed unforgivable atrocities.

Greed in all its forms is the true villain in Foreverland. Greed for youth, greed for a longer life, greed for fame and recognition--as well as the traditional greed for things...more and better things than the neighbors. Extreme wealth does give its possessors power over the less wealthy, and unfortunately wisdom is not a prerequisite to wealth. In three sections, "Foreverland Boxed" explores a development worse than slavery or the trade in body parts--rich old men, rich old women, and a "Foundation" of dubious distinction begin a body translation process all too terrifying in its potential reality.

Tony Bertauski creates rich sensory worlds where even the inhabitants can't distinguish the "created" from "reality." Resistance leads to torture and death. As in all good literature, we understand the desires of the "bad guys" even if we can't tolerate them...we are forced to question what we would do, given the money and a chronic fatal illness? Bertauski also narrates, and the power of his quiet, almost intimate voice in your mind makes the plot's unfolding even more explosive.

All too often, the current dystopias lack adequate scientific underpinnings and seem to tell the same three stories: we have destroyed Earth and need another planet, aliens want our planet so we need to fight them and/or find another planet, or we are just on the verge of destroying Earth so we make last-ditch efforts to rescue what's left of humanity and the planet. This dystopia based on social dysfunction is intense and compelling without aliens or space battles. I give "Foreverland Boxed" five stars--you won't be able to put it down.

"The Author/Narrator provided this book in exchange for a fair, unbiased review."